


music's too sad without you

by virtuosity



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fix-it...ish, Mentions of Florida and Jackie, Post-TTYCT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 12:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17580947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtuosity/pseuds/virtuosity
Summary: She couldn’t listen to music anymore. She was a dancer who couldn’t listen to music. She tried again and again, but every song, every note, every lyric, every everything was like a kick to the stomach.





	1. Tessa

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic has been in the works for awhile, but because of the ever-changing landscape of what's been happening it has gone through several iterations. In the end, I didn't feel comfortable making Jackie a villain, because she isn't, or placing blame about anything that could or would happen on either Tessa or Scott. Really, I remembered that I needed to keep this as fiction and not speculation and I'm hoping that you all can join me in that with this. 
> 
> I don't want this to be taken as an indictment of either of them or as an attack on anybody involved. I'm not taking sides or placing blame - I'm firmly on the 'these people are adults who are happy and we have no right to tell them what they can and can't do and really we don't know anything about them' side. 
> 
> That said...I did write a fic about it. So. :P 
> 
> As this fic moved from "we don't know what's happening" to "well maybe" to "yeah this is a thing" it took on different forms and in the end it's this strange patchwork of all of them. I'm not sure how I feel about it to be honest, but I've been wrestling with it for months, and I needed it to leave me be. 
> 
> If anyone wants to suffer more, the title and inspiration for this fic came from the song "Music's Too Sad Without You" by Kylie Minogue and Jack Savoretti, especially the live version. Which you can find [here](https://youtu.be/LhIdlkDQeDY). 
> 
> Also - just because I want this out there right away - this fic doesn't resolve a single thing. There is no ending. So keep that in mind.

_ Tessa _

She couldn’t listen to music anymore. She was a dancer who couldn’t listen to music. She tried again and again, but every song, every note, every lyric, every  _ everything _ was like a kick to the stomach. 

The truth was music was too sad without him. All of it. Even when she tried to listen to 90s bubblegum pop all she could think of was him singing and dancing to it in the car on the way home from Canton. The radio gave her nothing - Ariana Grande was now forever attached to Moulin Rouge thanks to Jordan Cowan, and Cardi B was the tour, and even the flashback stations provided no solace - there were endless songs they had skated to and wanted to skate to and argued over whether or not they should skate to. Of course country was simply out of the question; the last thing she needed when she was heartbroken was country, the music of pain. Even Hall & Oates. Flashes of his exasperation when she would add them to any shared playlist, his adamant refusal to skate to them even during warmup, that one breathless cozy unforgettable time they had curled together under a quilt in Osaka and he’d murmured the lyrics to You Make My Dreams Come True against the skin of her neck. 

It  _ hurt. _ Every song hurt.   

She didn’t even really know what happened. It almost felt like the last three years had been some kind of wonderful fever dream. They had fallen together in the most simple, comfortable way, both single-mindedly focused on one goal - Pyeongchang - and after the mess that had been left of them after Sochi, all they had wanted was to be near each other. They needed that physical contact, something that had been a constant in their lives since they were children, just the feeling of the other  _ there _ with them. But then they’d needed more than that. They had needed each other mentally, and emotionally, and sometimes she almost felt spiritually. It was so strangely easy. They hadn’t talked about it, not really, it just was what it was. She had wondered what would happen after the Olympics, if they would have to have the talk, the one she didn’t know the ending of, but it hadn’t happened. They’d continued on in this blissful togetherness, collapsing exhaustedly together after every SOI show across Canada, every show across Japan, across Belgium, keeping each other going in their post-Olympics haze. 

Then she was in France and he was home and even then they were still who they had become. They were them but  _ more _ . They finally got the sleep they so desperately needed, recharging apart, but so ready to reunite after those weeks. She realized that apparently they could still be  _ this _ when they weren’t physically together, it still worked, it spanned continents and oceans, and maybe, finally, they had figured it out. 

But then they had stumbled. He’d gone on that podcast and they’d swerved into that talk that they didn’t have an end for and for days he couldn’t look at her and she was desperately trying to make sense of what she felt and what he felt and what they were. Then one night, days later, he had slid into bed with her and held her tightly and they had paused it. It didn’t need to happen yet. They could still be this. For now. 

Then it was prep for the tour and the tour itself and they were clinging to each other through Moulin Rouge, and laughing their way through Nasty and Pony, and teasing their way through 4 Minutes, and curling up in his bunk as the engines rumbled beneath them. He was getting distracted by her doing yoga live on national television, and she was caught on camera with - what did people call it? heart eyes? - her Scott heart eyes, and it was fine, more than fine, it was great. 

But then they were in Nova Scotia and he had asked her the question. Not  _ the  _ question, but the one that just wanted to know what was next, where did he fall on her list of priorities, and where did they fall, and what about a family and building a home, and he didn’t use those words but she knew what he’d meant. 

And she’d frozen. She’d gone still, unable to reach for him to beg him to help her make sense and make a plan and not be so  _ scared _ , to tell her that they could meld what he wanted and what she wanted into what they wanted, but she couldn’t move. All she’d managed was a stilted, stuttered, “I - I’m not - I -” and he’d let out a heavy breath that it felt like he’d been holding for three years and said “okay,” rolled over, and then he was gone. 

The next day she had clasped his hand and looked at him, hoping he would see what she couldn’t say, and he was still Scott and he looked at her like  _ that _ , but he wasn’t hers anymore. They were still Tessa and Scott, just not the  _ more _ anymore. She couldn’t do anything with the pain she was feeling so she turned it off. That was always how she handled what she couldn’t control - she pretended it didn’t exist. So they went to Nashville and they were playful and silly and skated to 21 Summer and it was like the last three years had never happened. They danced with their old friends and their new friends and people they loved after the show, and she pushed away the feelings she couldn’t handle until she found out that Jackie was coming to Toronto. 

It was not unlike how she had felt when she’d fallen through the cracked ice at Harrison Park that one winter only this time Scott wasn’t there to pull her back out. 

That’s when music stopped being an escape and started being a punishment. Silence was all she could listen to now. 


	2. Scott

_Scott_

He couldn’t sing along to music anymore. He’d open his mouth and nothing would come out, leaving him with this hollow feeling in his chest. It was almost like his voice knew that if it made its way out of his throat it would find itself alone, waiting for another voice that would never come. Whenever he drove he found himself glancing into the passenger seat at the start of every song, expecting to see her there, bouncing and laughing or attempting to change the station without him noticing. 

He’d thought that the radio would be better - he had given up on Spotify after a truly upsetting drive that involved a hurried attempt to skip “Long Time Running” only to find himself swerving into the other lane as he scrambled to change “Come What May” when it followed. He’d felt like he was living in a sitcom, except without the laugh track. 

Everything had stopped that night he had asked the question and been met with nothing but a stammer and a wall.  _ He  _ had stopped. He stopped himself from holding her closer to him than he needed to, he stopped making sure that he never went more than a few minutes without touching her, stopped loving her. Or so he tried to make it seem. 

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to pull away from her entirely, so he reverted back to who they’d been before they had fallen together in the first place. She went along with it so easily and it fueled his fear that she hadn’t wanted more than simple. Later, he would realize that he had chosen not to see her beseeching gaze and the way her hands gripped at him as he pulled away from her. He didn’t see then that she was clinging to whatever bit of him that she could still have.   

At the dinner to support the Special Olympics it didn’t occur to him that he’d placed himself between her and Jackie. It didn’t even occur to him that she would care about Jackie being there in the first place. He thought that things were different now.  _ They _ were different now, and for the first time since 2015, they weren’t seeing through the same lens. 

Even as they made their way down the red carpet at the Walk of Fame, him doing his best to keep his eyes from lingering on the freckles across her shoulders, and truly unable to look her in the eye throughout the day because he was barely holding it together. Not because of what had happened between them, but because of how far they had come and what they had accomplished. It was the one day where found himself able to hold her hand. 

He noticed that she had started turning off the radio in every car that picked them up or dropped them off, but he wrote it off, assuming she was tired or had a headache. And even though the music was always pounding in her posts on Instagram, it was quiet when he passed through as he was dressed and prepped. She didn’t reach for her headphones in the airport as they were waiting to board to go to Vancouver and even when they announced that electronic devices could be used once again as they leveled out in the air, she just left her phone where she had shoved in her bag and turned her head to gaze out the window. 

Days past and then weeks. He went to Florida and she went home.   

Christmas came and went and they didn’t talk, with the exception of the customary ‘Merry Christmas’ text they always sent. He shut down that gnawing feeling in his gut when his mother sent him the picture Tessa had posted to Instagram on Boxing day - only Tessa would wear fucking  _ flamingo _ pajamas in the snow. 

He napped  and skated with the kids at the rink and let himself sink into the comfort and companionship that Jackie offered. He needed it and it felt like a balm to a scalding burn that wouldn’t quite heal. 

It continued on that way until the photoshoot. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to see her and he was nearly sick to his stomach when he realized it.. 

But then there she was and he felt like his heart was going to beat out of this chest and he did his best to ignore that she was giving him her press conference smile. 

That night, back in his hotel room, he realized - it wasn’t going to work. This time they wouldn’t be able to overcome what had happened between them. They had accomplished this big magnificent goal and enjoyed the hell out of this last year of their partnership, but that’s what it was. The last. 

All that was left to do was make it final. 

Not caring about the time or the place or the process, he was on his feet and determinedly knocking on her hotel door before he could talk himself out of it. There was no answer. He ran through a list of places she could be, but really he already knew that there was only one place she would be if she couldn’t sleep at one a.m.  

He made his way into the hotel gym and stopped at the sight of her on the treadmill. She was flushed, sweat dripping down her skin, her hair matted and stuck to her neck. She was keeping a constant, punishing pace, and, of course, was listening only to the whir of the machine and her feet slapping the belt. No headphones, no workout playlist, and he knew better than anyone that Tessa loved her workout playlists.

And with a clarity that he knew he should have had weeks ago he realized that she wasn’t choosing not to listen to music - she  _ couldn’t _ listen to music, and he knew why, because it was for the same reason that he couldn’t. He should have known before, should have known when he’d done that podcast, should have known when he felt her freeze beside him in bed in the dark. The fact that she couldn’t say yes as quickly as he could, that she hesitated at all when it came to them and a future, cut him so deeply that his mind couldn’t fathom that it meant anything other than she didn’t love him and hadn’t been in this the same way that he had. That the last three years had changed his life, but for her it was nothing more than easy and comfortable.

In the face of his pain and fear, he had made an assumption, and it had been wrong. 

Like a one-two punch he was hit with guilt and anger. He should have known - but he also shouldn’t have  _ had _ to know. They always said that he knew her better than he knew himself, but he couldn’t always just  _ know _ , sometimes she had to be the one to take the leap and to say out loud what she felt. She had a responsibility to him just as much as he head to her. 

So where did that leave them? 

He was shattered, she was shattered, and, as seemed to be his pattern, he’d found another someone to funnel those feelings into.  _ No _ , he stopped himself. That wasn’t fair. Jackie wasn’t another someone - she was Jackie. And that meant something. It meant a lot actually. But, in the end, she also wasn’t Tessa. 

_ For fucks sake _ , he thought.  _ We are too old for this shit _ .

He didn’t know what he wanted anymore and he didn't know what the outcome would be, but he knew that they needed to talk. Stepping fully into the room, and called her name softly. She didn’t stop. Her eyes flicked to him, and she gave a little wave, her pace not faltering. 

“Tess, stop.” 

She shook her head and gave a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and panted, “Gotta stay in the zone, you know how it is.” 

He paused, then with conviction he asked, “No workout music today?” There was a stutter in her step. 

“Uh, no.” 

“Why?” he asked. 

She coughed lightly and hit a button on the treadmill, slowing her pace to a walk and then a stop. “No reason.”   
  
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

“Tess,” he said again, his voice soft but insistent. 

“I’m pretty beat,” she replied, grabbing her water bottle and stepping from the machine. “I’m gonna head up.” 

She did her best to step around him, but he caught her by the waist. “Tess.” 

With a shuddering breath, she said, “Scott, it’s fine. You don’t have to do this."

“Do what?” 

“You don’t have to, I don’t know - I get it. I fucked up and I don’t know what I want and I don’t know what I’m doing, you don’t have to do this,” she replied. 

“Tess, stop,” he said. “I know why you aren’t listening to music.”

She looked up at him, her eyes both shining and suspicious, and he huffed out a small laugh. Only Tessa could be hopeful and suspicious at the same time. 

“What?” 

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he asked. 

“What’s hard?” she breathed. 

“Listening to it,” he told her. “You can’t sing along and everything feels like a reminder and it’s just easier to have it be silent than anything else.”

“How do you know that?” 

“How do you think?” he asked, frustration leaking into his voice. “ _ God _ , Tessa.”

He took a breath, reigning himself in at the sight of her shutting herself down at his words. “Why didn’t you just tell me? We could have figured this out.” 

“But I didn’t - you want more than this,” she said. 

“I don’t, Tess. I can’t believe that after all of this time you would even think that.” 

She scoffed. “Why wouldn’t I?” 

“Why  _ would _ you?” 

“Because you do!” she said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Clearly.” 

“Clearly what?” he pressed. “I made a mistake, Tessa! I shut you down and I shut you out because I was scared and I was hurt, and that’s not okay, I know that. But I didn’t do this by myself!”

“How was Florida?” she spat, her eyes dark. 

His jaw clenched at her words. “Don’t do that.” 

“Don’t do what, Scott? I just asked a question.” 

“That had nothing to do with you, Tessa,” he said, his voice low. “It wasn’t about us.”

“Oh please,” she replied. “You run off to your ‘original skating partner’,” she hooked her fingers into sarcastic quotation marks, “like a week after we….whatever we did, and it’s not about us?”

“Jealousy isn’t a good look on you,” he said, seething. 

“Yeah, well, betrayal looks like shit on you,” she replied. 

“I didn’t betray you! I didn’t do any of this to hurt you! I thought I was giving you what you wanted.”

She laughed humorlessly. “You thought that I wanted to have to stand there and watch you with someone else? To take someone else to the Walk of Fame? In twenty years, I would never have thought you could do that. I never thought you could be that  _ cruel _ .”

“I thought you didn’t want  _ me _ , Tessa!” 

She wilted, the fight going out of her. “I thought -” she stopped herself. 

He stepped backward, wounded. “That’s what you thought?”

“I -” she stuttered. “I’m not - .”

He swallowed heavily, feelings of anger and shame and disbelief fighting for dominance in his mind. 

“I can’t believe you would think that I would do that,” he said finally. 

After a moment, she said, steadily, “I can’t believe you would think that I don’t love you.” 

“I never thought you didn’t love me, Tessa. I thought you didn’t love me the way that I love you.” 

“You’re wrong. You  _ know better _ ,” she said fiercely. 

“I can’t always just  _ know _ . Sometimes you have to tell me.” 

She let out a long, slow breath, her eyes calculating and contemplative. Then, “I don’t know what I want. I don’t know where I want to be. I don’t know what I want to do. Right now the future is this strange, blurry, confusing, exciting mess. But that doesn’t include you. I mean, not - no.  _ Fuck _ .” 

He took pity on her and reached out to pull her into him. Her arms came up automatically to wrap around his shoulders and she buried her face in his neck.  “You’re not blurry,” she mumbled into his skin. 

“I’m not?” 

“No. You’re clear.”

“Right.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry that I made you think you were blurry.”

He kissed the side of her head. “I didn’t think that I was blurry, Tess. I thought that I was invisible.”

He felt her breath hitch like she was both trying not to cry and trying not to yell at the same time. “You’re not invisible, Scott.”

“Okay,” he replied. “Good.”

“So what now?” she asked quietly. 

He hesitated. “I don’t know.”

He felt her swallow hard before pushing herself back from him, caught her quick wipe of the tear on her cheek before she looked up at him nodding. “Okay.”

“Okay.” 

They stared at each other. 

The only sound in the room was the whirring of the machines. 

“Okay,” he repeated. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that. I can shake this off a bit. 
> 
> I really don't know how I feel about this, so any feedback is appreciated.


End file.
